The Case of the Lazy Lover (15 page)

"What I told you is the truth, Mr. Mason."

"Okay. At eight o'clock tomorrow morning start broadcasting."

"And you think you can make Fleetwood talk before tomorrow morning?"

Mason said, "I'm going to be a busy little boy, and when I get done I'm going to put so much heat on Bob Fleetwood that the varnish will begin to crack."

"I think you're very, very nice, Mr. Mason," she said.

"You don't know the half of it," Mason said, grinning. "Incidentally, while it's all right for you to tell them about Patricia clipping the corner of the hedge, and about finding Fleetwood lying there unconscious, be careful to emphasize the fact that Patricia didn't think she had hit anyone."

"But doesn't that make it worse? In other words, shouldn't Pat have known it?"

"Sure, she should have known it. You don't think for a minute she hit him, do you?"

"Why, Mr. Mason… I… She must have!"

"Phooey!" Mason said. "Your husband planted his car in such a position that Patricia would have to cut the corner of the hedge. Your husband was the one who discovered Fleetwood lying there."

Her eyes were wide with the sudden realization of what must have happened. "You mean then, that it was all a plant that…"

"Sure it was a plant," Mason said. "Your husband cracked Fleetwood on the head He thought he'd killed him. He had a corpse to dispose of with a nice little head injury. The best way he could dispose of it was by letting Patricia think she'd hit him with her automobile, and letting her take the rap."

Mrs. Allred pressed her knuckles against her lips.

"Think it over," Mason said. "Don't emphasize it. Let Lieutenant Tragg uncover it, then it'll be his baby."

And Mason walked out, leaving her sitting there.

Chapter 14

"Drake in?" Mason asked the night janitor who brought up the elevator.

"Yeah. He came in fifteen or twenty minutes ago. You fellows must be working on something hot."

Mason said, "Oh, we're just keeping out of mischief."

Drake kept switchboard operators on twenty-four hours a day, so Mason, opening the office door, jerked his thumb toward Drake's inner office and at the same time raised his eyebrows in silent interrogation.

The girl at the switchboard, busy taking a call, nodded and pointed.

Mason unlatched the gate from the narrow, cramped waiting room, walked down the long corridor and into Drake's office.

Drake was talking on the phone as Mason came in.

He motioned the lawyer to a seat, said into the telephone, "Okay, I got it. Now give me that address again.

"All right. No, stay on the job. Just keep an ear to the ground and see what you can find out. Telephone anything that looks important."

Drake hung up the phone and said, "Well, that's a break. I don't know how much of a break."

"What is it?" Mason asked.

"That's my man down them at headquarters in the pressroom."

"What's he found out?"

"The last reports say Fleetwood is still sticking to his amnesia story."

Mason said, "That's not a break. That's something I want to talk with you about, Paul. What else?"

"He went through the motions of just having regained his memory, and called his girl friend."

"Did your man get her number?"

"Her name, telephone number and address."

"What's her name?"

"Bernice Archer."

"Her name hasn't entered the case. What about her?"

"Oh, he just called her to tell her that he'd been suffering from a lapse of memory, that the police told him he'd been holed up at the ranch of a man named Overbrook, that he'd just regained his memory, and that under no circumstances was she to pay any attention to anything she might hear about him, until he had an opportunity to explain things to her."

"What sort of a conversation was it?" Mason asked. "Was it difficult, do you know?"

"How do you mean?"

"Was the girl throwing a fit?"

"No. Apparently it was just a routine conversation. He called her, talked to her and then hung up."

Mason frowned, then said, "That doesn't seem right, Paul."

"Why not?"

Mason said, "Suppose you're a guy's girl friend. Every one of your friends knows that, he's going with you. Now all of a sudden, the fellow takes a run-out powder. Apparently he's run away with a married woman. You don't hear anything from him. Then out of a clear sky, he rings up and says, `Listen, sweetheart, don't believe anything you hear about me. I've had a lapse of memory. I'll be up to see you as soon as I can.' Well, that just isn't right."

"You mean the girl friend would throw hysterics?"

"She'd probably raise hell. There would be tears and recriminations, and then she would wind up with the question, `Well, do you love me? Well, tell me you love me. Well, tell me this other woman was nothing in your life.' You know, all that sort of stuff."

"Could be, all right," Drake said.

"Of course," Mason went on, "I'm having troubles of my own, Paul, and I'm looking for loopholes everywhere."

"What's happening?"

Mason said, "My client tells me a story that's probably okay. She swears it is. It's a story that could stand up, if it had just the right props, but it's a story that could fall down mighty easy."

"Well?"

"Now this man, Fleetwood," Mason said "is in a spot. He pulled this amnesia business, and I managed to get him into the hands of the police before he'd had an opportunity to do too much thinking about it. Right now, he's stuck with the murder of Bertrand Allred. He was the last man to see him alive, and he can't deny that he killed him, because he doesn't know anything at all that happened.

"Obviously, a man as shrewd as Fleetwood is not going to let himself be placed in that position without trying to do something about it. The only thing that he can do is to come out and admit that all this amnesia business was a stall, that he remembers everything."

"The minute he does that, he's put himself in a hell of a fix," Drake said.

"I know that," Mason said "and that's the thing that I've been counting on as a prop to help hold up Mrs. Allred's story – but a great deal is going to depend on what he says when he starts telling the truth."

Drake shook his head. "If he took Mrs. Allred's car, then he was the last person to see her husband alive. If he gives a load of this amnesia business to the police, and through them to the newspaper boys, and finally weakens and says that he knew what was going on all the time, it doesn't make such a hell of a lot of difference what his story is. I think his best move is to sit tight on the amnesia, regardless of how much it hurts."

"It might be, at that," Mason said, "and we don't want him to do what's good for him. We want him to do what's good for my client. We'll force his hand. I think that he'll start telling the truth about the amnesia, and when he does he'll tell a story that will have been carefully thought out."

"It'll have to be quite a story, Perry."

"Well, he may be just the boy who can think one up. I'd like to force his hand, Paul. I'd like to make him tell his story before he's ready to tell it. I want to make things so hot for him, he'll start squirming and twisting."

"How would you go about doing that?"

"I think the first place to start might be his girl friend."

"Want to go out there first thing in the morning, and…"

"Why not go out there now?"

Drake made a little shrugging gesture with his shoulders.

Mason said "What is it? An apartment house, Paul?"

"Uh huh."

Mason said, "She's had a phone call from Fleetwood. She's awake. She's probably curious. Let's go out and have a talk with her."

"Okay by me," Drake said. "I just swigged about a gallon of coffee, and won't be able to sleep tonight, anyway. I thought you'd probably have enough stuff to keep me going all night."

"That's fine," Mason said. "We'll drive out in your car. You have the address?"

"Right."

"Let's go."

They left the office, entered Drake's car, and Mason immediately settled back against the cushions, put his head on the back of the front seat and closed his eyes.

"Tired?" Drake asked.

"I'm just trying to think," Mason told him. "This isn't an ordinary case where you don't know what happened or how it happened. This is a case where the District Attorney is going to have to prosecute one of two persons for murder. One or the other of those persons simply has to be guilty as the facts now stand. If my client is lying, she may be guilty. If she is, I'm simply going to represent her to the best of my ability and let it go at that, but if Fleetwood is guilty and he is trying to blame it on my client, I'm going to try and outwit him."

It was some fifteen minutes later that Drake eased his car to a stop in front of an apartment house. "This is the place," he said. "We'll probably have to drive a couple of blocks in order to find a parking space. It's pretty well cluttered up with automobiles."

Mason said, "Looks like a place across the street there. That's a fire plug."

"How about it?"

"Sure," Mason said, "provided you can park and still leave access to the plug in case there should be a fire."

"Don't worry about that," Drake told him. "In case there's a fire these boys get to the fire plug all right. It's kind of tough on your automobile, but they get there. I saw one car that had been left locked in front of a fire plug. There was a fire and the fire department just chopped a hole in both sides of the car, put the hose right on through and went to work. When the owner came back, he had a car with a tunnel chopped through it and tickets for overtime parking and tickets for parking in front of a fire plug."

"Probably cured him," Mason said. "Wait a minute, Paul. That man looks as though he's going to get in a car and drive away. If he has a parking place… there he is, unlocking that Dodge. Hey, Paul, drive on past, fast!"

Mason dropped down, out of sigh.

"What's the matter?" Drake asked, speeding up.

"'That fellow," Mason said, "is George Jerome, Allred's partner."

"Want to try to tail him?" Drake asked.

"Hell, no," Mason said. "It isn't where he's going that's important. It's where he's been."

"You mean he's…"

"Sure," Mason said. "He's been calling on this girl friend of Fleetwood's. What did you say her name was?"

"Bernice Archer."

"Drive around the block," Mason said, "then come on back. Perhaps we can get in the parking place that Jerome had."

Drake said, "He's a big brute; isn't he?"

"Uh huh."

"A powerful man like that could pick a fellow up and break him with his bare hands. I'd hate to get tangled with him in an alley on some dark night."

"We may have an opportunity to do that very thing before we get done," Mason said. "He's mixing in this case altogether too much to suit me."

"What does he want?"

"He says he wants to get Fleetwood's testimony nicely sewed up in order to protect him in a lawsuit."

Mason got back on the seat. Drake drove around the block, found that the parking place which had been vacated by Jerome's car was still available, and skillfully parked his car.

The doors of the apartment house were closed and locked at this hour of the night, but there was an electric callboard and buzzer system.

Drake ran his finger down the directory until he came to the card of Bernice Archer, then pressed the button opposite it.

"Suppose she'll use the speaking tube?" Drake asked. "If she does, what'll we tell her?"

"She'll probably buzz the door open," Mason said. "She'll think it's Jerome coming back."

They waited for a moment, then Drake pressed the button again.

The electric buzzer signified that the catch had been thrown back on the street door. Mason, who had been standing with his hand on the knob, pushed it open, said, "Okay, Paul, here we go."

The small lobby was dimly lit, but they could see a corridor and an oblong of bright light which indicated the location of the automatic elevator.

"Jerome left the elevator for us," Mason said.

They walked down the thinly carpeted corridor, entered the elevator, and Drake pressed the button.

The elevator rattled slowly upward.

"You do the talking," Drake asked, "or do you want me to?"

"You start in," Mason said. "Introduce yourself as a detective. Don't say whether you're police or private, unless she asks. Start asking her questions about Fleetwood, about when she heard from him last, and things of that sort. I'll chip in if she gives me an opening. Don't introduce me. She may think I'm another detective."

The automatic elevator stopped. The door slowly opened. Drake, sizing up the numbers on the apartments, said, "Okay, Perry, it's down here to the right."

Drake knocked at the door.

The woman who opened it was about twenty-five, a blonde with clear blue eyes and skin which needed but little make-up. 'The silk robe did not conceal much of a strikingly good figure.

There was a wallbed in the room which had been let down. The covers were rumpled and the pillow showed that it had been in recent use. The door to the closet was open, showing several dresses on hangers.

Drake, assuming a hard-boiled voice, said, "I'm Paul Drake. You may have heard of me. I'm a detective."

"May I see your credentials, Please?" she asked very quietly. Drake glanced dubiously at Perry Mason, then produced a billfold which he showed briefly, then snapped shut and started to return to his pocket "Just a moment," she said, "please." She calmly reached out for the billfold, studied the card, said, "Oh, I see. This is your license as a private detective."